Jeff Starck

Daily Herald Media

Mom-and-pop bait shop owners don’t expect to see much business from the dozens of anglers who will be in the Wausau area for this week’s 2013 World Ice Fishing Championship.

Anglers from 11 countries will participate in the competition, which is billed as the Olympics of ice fishing.

Event organizers said that anglers at previous world championship competitions spent hundreds of dollars on fishing supplies and gear. That might be true, but the owners of small businesses such as Morrill’s Bait Shop and Mosinee Bait & Taxidermy do not plan on seeing much action from the worldly anglers leading up to the Feb. 16 and 17 competition on the nearby Big Eau Pleine Reservoir.

“I’ve heard of (the competition), but no one has told me anything about it,” said Mary Morrill, who has owned her small shop on Highway O in the town Bergen since 1977. Her shop carries only a handful of supplies, but she does offer several forms of live bait just a few miles from the Big Eau Pleine.

Gary Schmidt’s bait and taxidermy shop is on Highway 153 in Mosinee and carries a wide selection of lures, jigs and other fishing gear, but his selection and location on the main drag through the city nearest to the competition doesn’t guarantee him business, either.

“I won’t be stocking up on anything extraordinary,” Schmidt said last week.

Morrill and Schmidt’s main concerns aren’t the fishing needs of the Estonian or Lithuanian ice fishing teams, but the everyday angler needing minnows or wax worms while trying to lure a decent sized crappie, or maybe even a legal-sized walleye, from the reservoir.

The Ice Team USA’s website has an order form from a British company for bait, including maggots, night crawlers, wax worms and meal worms, that will be provided to competing teams at the team hotel.

The international anglers are expected to spend some money during their stay in town. The ice fishing championship itinerary posted on the Team USA website includes shopping at Fleet Farm in Wausau and downtown Wausau, as well as a trip to the Central Wisconsin Sports Show at The Patriot Center in Rothschild. The sports show also is near Gander Mountain, but the itinerary does not list Gander Mountain as a shopping destination.

(Page 2 of 2)

Messages left for Fleet Farm’s corporate office and Gander Mountain’s public relations firm were not returned.

Darien Schaefer, executive director of the Wausau/Central Wisconsin Visitors and Convention Bureau, said athletes who participated last summer at the International Canoe Federation’s 2012 Junior Canoe Slalom World Championship in Wausau frequently visited stores and shops throughout the Wausau area. He expects ice fishermen at the competition will spend a few dollars, yen and euros in Wausau, too.

“Part of the experience here is to do some shopping and take advantage of products that are not necessarily available in their own country,” Schaefer said.

Rhinelander hosted the World Ice Fishing Championship in 2010, and three small bait shop and fishing supply stores in that community said they saw little if no business from the championship.

“These guys are professionals and have sponsors,” said Greg Graves, store manager for Mel’s Trading Post in Rhinelander. “They have all that stuff.”

Undoubtedly some restaurants, taverns and hotels will benefit financially from roughly 100 visitors from across the world spending a week in the Wausau area. Some small stores will probably sell a T-shirt or Northwoods souvenir with Wausau stamped on it that will end up going through customs next week in Finland, Mongolia or another country.

Having two international events in the span of seven months is good for business and the local economy, even if the mom-and-pop bait shops don’t benefit. Graves said he would welcome another visit by the world’s best ice fishermen even though his business didn’t profit from the championship in 2010.